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October 26, 2004

Host: Michael Grant
Topics:
· KAET-ASU Poll;
· District 2 Congressional Race
In-Studio Guests:
· Dr. Merrill, Director of the KAET-ASU Poll and political science professor, ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication;
· Tara Blanc, KAET/ASU Poll Assistant
· Congressman Trent Franks, Republican, Congressional District 2;
· Randy Camacho, Democratic challenger, Congressional District 2

>> Michael Grant:
Tonight on "Horizon," the latest KAET/ASU poll finds Senator Kerry cutting into President Bush's lead in our state but will his momentum be enough to overtake the president come election day. And support drops for proposition that targets illegal immigrants. We'll look at why fewer people support Proposition 200. Plus, the protection of Luke Air Force Base, one of the issues in the district 2 congressional race. We'll hear from the candidates Trent Franks and Randy Camacho about where they stand on this issue and more. Good evening. I'm Michael Grant. The latest KAET/ASU poll found President Bush's lead over Senator John Kerry in Arizona cut by about half, conducted by the Walter Cronkite School of journalism and mass communication. The poll also found support for Proposition 200 has dropped 10 points since the last time we polled on that issue. The telephone survey of 573 registered voters was conducted October 19th through the 21st, has a sampling error rate of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. Here's a look at the poll results.

>> Mike Sauceda:
President Bush's lead slipped from 11 points last month to 5 points this month. 47% of those we surveyed plan to vote for Bush. 42% say they will vote for Democratic Senator John Kerry. 1% support the Libertarian while 10% remain undecided. People remain very committed to their candidate. 95% of Bush supporters say they don't plan on changing their minds between now and Election Day while 92% of Kerry supporter's say they will stick with their man. We asked whether they watched the debates. 11% said they watched one debate, 23% watched two, and 66% said they watched all three. Of those who watched at least one debate, 47% said they thought the debates favored Kerry, 11% said Bush. Turning to Bush's approval ratings, 51% approve of his job performance. 47% like the way the president is handling the U.S. economy. While 49% do not. He gets his highest approval ratings in his handling on the war against terrorism, 52%, with 44% disapproving of him in that arena. His lowest approval rating comes in his handling on the war in Iraq with the exact opposite numbers, 44% approve of his performance there while 52% disapprove. Finally support for Proposition 200 keeps dropping. When we polled in July on the measure to restrict certain benefits to illegal immigrants and to require proof of citizenship when registering to vote and proof of I.D. when voting, 74% supported it. That has steadily declined each month to 54% support in October. The percentage against 200 has grown each month with 31% against it this month. 15% haven't made up their minds.

>> Michael Grant:
Joining me now are a couple people who I'm not sure have made up their mind. One is Bruce Merrill, director of the KAET/ASU poll. Dr. Merrill political science professor in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Also here is Tara Blanc, KAET/ASU Poll Assistant and a fine one at that. Give me the latest on the national polls. How do these load up against the latest data you're seeing? Because you are pore over those minute by minute.

>> Bruce Merrill:
Basically what we found, Mike, is that it has narrowed since the debates and Tara is going to talk about the debates but they were significant, I think. It's about a five-percentage point lead. That's within statistical error but there have been two other polls, the republic poll and NAU did a poll, both of them basically showing a 5 or 6% lead. Our best guess is that bush is probably 5 or 6 percentage points ahead at this particular time.

>> Michael Grant:
If memory serves, that was the bush-gore result in Arizona in 2000.

>> Bruce Merrill:
It was. In the national polls, it's virtually dead even, Michael. I really think it is so close, both in the electoral vote, that my wisdom would be two things, one, anybody that would predict how this election is going to come out is a fool. I mean, it's just impossible for anybody to know.

>> Michael Grant:
You realize you just defamed the vice-president now, don't you? He called it 52-47 yesterday.

>> Bruce Merrill:
I saw did he that. I guess he would have to fall in that category. Nobody knows. Let me tell you why I say that. It's a cliche', but the idea now that the only poll that counts is the vote on election day is really true. It gets down to who goes to the polls on election day and only 60, 62% maybe of the national voters are actually going to go out to the polls, and it may be a little higher, but nobody can predict the outcome based on who goes to the polls.

>> Michael Grant:
We have a ton of sub data here which we are not going to get to, but we did take a shot at most likely to vote. The spread went to seven points. How do we go about determining most likely to vote?

>> Tara Blanc:
We actually look at some demographic statistics about the people we're talking to. We look at how often they voted in the past, how important the election is to them, ask a couple questions about how they view the government, how they're set politically, whether they're more in the middle or a little more extreme. There's research that shows certain of those characteristics are characteristic of people who are likely to vote. So we assign sort of a value based on those demographics and are able to pull out people who we think are, according to our research, is more likely to vote.

>> Michael Grant:
It's interesting, in the old days, you did this by culling your sample from people who had voted in the last two elections, but with the incredible growth factor here in registration numbers, if you do it that way, you miss a substantial chunk of the body politic.

>> Tara Blanc:
It's going to be interesting in this election especially because the sample we're using is fairly new. It comes from the Secretary of State, and those rolls are refreshed fairly often but they registered so many new voters for this election, it is hard to tell who exactly is going to go to the polls and what the likely voter looks like based on all the new people have been brought into the process.

>> Michael Grant:
Overall approval rating, my recall is that has been in the upper 40s for President Bush, occasionally in the low 50s, right now it's 51. That's good news for President Bush in Arizona?

>> Bruce Merrill:
You know, Michael, for six months now it's been between like 48 and 51. This last one was 51. It's actually right at 50 nationwide, and as we've said on the program before, the strongest single predictor of whether or not an incumbent president wins is what his performance rating is, his overall rating, in the last poll before the election. So it's just another indicator that this is going to be very close and as Tara point out, the thing for our viewers to really understand is there isn't any pollsters that I know of, including Tara and myself and others that have a really good way to predict who is going to vote. It's just not possible.

>> Michael Grant:
President has narrowed the gender gap considerably from Bush-Gore in 2000.

>> Bruce Merrill:
He has. In the last election gore had a very significant lead, 15 to 17% with women. Nationwide it's down to about 7% about half of that. What we found in Arizona was interesting. There is a gender gap, but it's a reverse gender gap. Women were fairly evenly divided. They tend to go a little bit more for Kerry, but men were significantly, 12, 13 percentage points more supportive of Bush and I think it's partially on the war. Men tend to find appear little more acceptable than women.

>> Michael Grant:
Let me ask a series of questions about the debates, one of which is did you see some of them and everybody raised their hand and said yeah.

>> Tara Blanc:
We had --

>> Michael Grant:
Do we distrust that result?

>> Tara Blanc:
Maybe a little bit. I think it falls into the category being socially desirable answer to say, yes are I saw the debate but the way we phrased it was did you see any of the debates. I think that probably netted us a wider group of people who actually had seen at least one or part of one. So about 90 people who had said they had seen at least one debate.

>> Michael Grant:
I thought an amazing statistic was the one that 11% thought President Bush had won and 47% thought Senator Kerry had won. But it really didn't move very many people.

>> Tara Blanc:
No. It's interesting, because the question got asked over and over again in a lot of the polls who you thought won the debate, but -- and that was talked about a lot, which I think impacted people's view of who actually won the debate but the question that wasn't asked often enough was, well, did it change your vote? When we asked that question, the bottom line was pretty much no, there was a very small percentage of people who said it had changed who they would vote for.

>> Michael Grant:
"Protect Arizona Now" Proposition 200, we simply walk through its component parts and support is dropping but it's still better than two to one.

>> Bruce Merrill:
It's about two to one, Michael, but it really has dropped at least 10 or 11 points in just a month. Barely a majority now, 53%, support it. And it really is, as we've said before, it's going to depend upon the advertising, whether or not the anti-200 people really have the money now to push this through. I think this could be very close and it wouldn't really surprise me if it actually fails on Election Day.

>> Michael Grant:
My instinct is a large turnout favors the anti-200 folks. Would you agree?

>> Bruce Merrill:
It really did. In fact, as Tara mentioned there's been 470,000, 480,000 people added to the voter registration rolls this year. A lot of those are first-time voters; people have that moved into Arizona, the Democrats are doing a lot of work trying to get minorities registered. If those people vote, we could have some really non-predicted results not only in Arizona but nationwide, I think, this year.

>> Michael Grant:
Bruce Merrill thanks for being here. Tara Blanc, our thanks to you as well. We'll see you next Tuesday. Congressional district 2 features a rematch of 2002 Republican Trent Franks beat Democrat Randy Camacho to replace the late Bob Stump. Congressional district 2 covers a diverse expanse of our state from the northwest Valley to Yavapai and Mohave counties to the west, and then along the Colorado River to the Hopi Indian reservation to the north. Camacho and Franks sat down with me recently to talk about the issues facing congressional district 2. Mr. Camacho, tell me why people ought to vote for you for Congress.

>> Randy Camacho:
Well, Michael, first, I'm an Arizona native, in fact, I grew up in CD 2, and I know CD 2 in and out, in fact I worked the garlic fields and on fields of CD 2. In 2002, "The Arizona Republic" endorsed me, in fact they endorsed me over Trent Franks and the reason they endorsed me is they felt my political views best represented the needs of Arizona's congressional district 2. The other reason that people should vote for me in district 2 is because I pledge to them to be accessible. I think it's very important to be accessible to the people. The third reason is, quite frankly, Trent Franks' agenda is too extreme for Congressional District 2 that.

>> Michael Grant:
Congressman Franks, why should the voters of CD2 return you to Congress.

>> Trent Franks:
You know, I think that the main thing is that the people of CD2, like almost all Americans, one, is that they want a strong national defense, they want to be safe in their homes, they want to be safe from terrorism and I'm on the armed services committee and that's a deep commitment in my heart. I believe the first purpose of the federal government is to defend the nation. I believe the second thing they want is a strong economy, strong jobs, and I'm convinced that the way to effect that is to have low taxes and low regulation and to turn loose the productive power of the American people. It's a conservative pro Reagan agenda, as you my say. I think the third thing they want is to protect the basic foundations of the nation, the constitutional principles that made us the greatest nation in the world, the faith, family and freedom, that have given us such prominence in the world. Those are all convictions I hold very dearly.

>> Michael Grant:
A lot of people in congressional district 2 also want to protect Luke Air Force Base but the real problem seems to be one of money, although everybody says, yeah, let's protect it, bottom line is there's a lot of privately held land there that could be developed, and how do you get the money to get that land out of private hands and into public ownership?

>> Trent Franks:
As you may know, as I mentioned, the first purpose of the federal government is to defend the nation, and therefore, I think it's a federal responsibility to protect Luke and to make sure that that southern departure corridor is open, and for that reason I worked in the last Congress successfully to help bring to the -- to bear in the process significant money, several -- about $13 million to buy land or development rights, more particularly the development rights, in that southern departure corridor to make sure that the access of the fighters from Luke is clear to the Goldwater range, which is what makes Luke such a magnificent cog in our arsenal of freedom.

>> Michael Grant :
I've heard numbers more like three, four, 500 million dollars to effectively --

>> Trent Franks:
If you bought the whole thing. The Air Force met with me shortly afterwards and with last year's appropriation and the previous year, we have $27 million. We don't have to buy all the land. The Air Force now believes they have at least for the 15,000-foot take-off range there, they believe that they have enough to buy the development rights necessary to ameliorate any incompatible land use for the base.

>> Michael Grant:
Mr. Camacho, is it a state responsibility or federal responsibility? You can make an argument that the base obviously is very economically valuable, and while part of the defense infrastructure, maybe Arizona ought to be stepping forward with that money and not necessarily the federal government.

>> Randy Camacho:
I think it's both. There's no doubt that it's vital to Arizona's economy. The money that's pumped into District 2 especially. The thing that I see with regards to Luke Air Force Base is we saw a great deal cooperation on the state and on the local level and on the federal level, and this is to be commended, to see this type of cooperation. Unfortunately, many of the mayors in the West Valley are very disappointed because they were fully expecting the base realignment and closure commission -- they were fully expecting this to go to them in 2005. So they were really gearing up for that. They were expecting this, and then Trent Franks really pushed for a 2007 closure -- or the hearings to be pushed to 2007, and when this occurred, it disappointed the mayors, in particular the Litchfield Mayor, who is directly impacted by this. They worked very hard to make sure that Luke was able to survive the 2005 base closures, and so this was disappointing. Secondly, what this does, by pushing it back two years, there are some bases throughout the country that need to be closed, and what it's done is basically added more debt to the -- or more debt to our federal budget.

>> Michael Grant:
Why the postponement? I hadn't heard the issue --

>> Trent Franks:
I think Randy is a wonderful gentleman, and I do mean that. There's a misunderstanding there. The fact is I'm on the military readiness subcommittee, the armed services committee, which oversees the BRAC process and one of the things that sometimes happens in that body of Congress is to try to do certain things in order to leverage for other things and one of the things we did, we voted away to do away with the BRAC process knowing that the administration, the defense department, would not be able to countenance in that over the long term so that we could have a negotiating position to work for things like search capacity, which would make Luke almost impervious to any closing. We made some progress in that regard, and I think because of that, and, of course, just for the record, the year hasn't been changed at all, I mean, the BRAC process is still 2005, but the --

>> Randy Camacho:
But you would like to push it back --

>> Trent Franks:
That's really not correct, but I understand how he would think that, and I think it's a sincere misunderstanding.

>> Randy Camacho:
I disagree --

>> Michael Grant:
Let me shift off to immigration. "Protect Arizona Now." Proposition 200. Good idea or bad idea?

>> Trent Franks:
Well, if you're asking me, I did not want the proposition the way it's written exactly to be on the ballot, but now that it is on the ballot, I intend to support it for a come of reasons 37 number one, the provisions of 200 are not unreasonable. There's some ambiguity that's of concern to me but the provisions there are things that are already in countries like Mexico where they have to have identification to vote and these kind of things and I think those are good things, but I think the overall intent is to try to address illegal immigration. Now illegal immigration has become a national security issue in my mind because of the growing indications that terrorists would use our borders as a means of entry because they look at our inability to control immigration. They think this may be the best way to enter America rather than use a fake visa.

>> Michael Grant:
Opponents to Proposition 200 say hold it, it won't do anything to help us curb illegal immigration, and you're kind of kidding yourself bypassing --

>> Trent Franks:
I understand that argument in a significant way. The problem is if the initiative goes down now, I think it's a signal that immigration -- or illegal immigration is not a big deal. If it passes, I think there's going to be a problem in court, I think they're going to slug it out in court for a long time but I think it will be a message to our policymakers to deal with this issue and I think they've been woefully unable to do that for a long time.

>> Michael Grant:
Mr. Camacho, what is your stand on prop 200? ?

>> Randy Camacho:
I would have to say there is a lack of understanding when it comes to that issue. When it comes to Proposition 200, there's several things that concern me right off the bat. First, it won't work. Secondly, it's going to make for a more bureaucratic government. It's going to expand government and make government more intrusive on all of our lives. And when it comes to 200, to me its -- its just a political tantrum, and its not going to work. But what we need to do is we do need to make sure that our law enforcement agencies along our border have the proper tools and the resources to fulfill their duty, to be able to -- that's their greatest frustration, is they're undermanned and underresourced. So this is a bill that will not work. It tends to divide people, and this is not what it should be doing.

>> Michael Grant:
What's wrong, though, with simply requiring when someone shows up, for example, to apply for welfare benefits, saying show me proof of citizenship in this country or for that matter shows up to vote, say, I want to make sure you're a U.S. citizen?

>> Randy Camacho:
There's nothing wrong with that. That's the problem. That this Proposition 200 is based on an assumption that voter fraud is occurring and that people are fraudulently accepting state benefits and federal benefits and that's far from the truth at this point. See, this is, again, an assumption. It's frustration. I'm frustrated that Congress, Trent Franks included, have not done enough to secure our borders, and not only that, it's not just the border issue, there's a long-term plan that we need to implement to make sure that we do what we can as America to enhance our -- sorry about that -- our economic ties with Latin America because prosperity there and in America would make it a journey that someone would not want to take, you know, risking life and limb to come to America.

>> Trent Franks:
Ironically I agree with everything -- the last part of what he said, and some of us have tried to address the immigration issue, I'm a co-sponsor of the clear act, and some of the things he's talking about would be addressed in that regard. That's one area we're in full agreement on. Congress -- it's their responsibility to address it and we haven't done so effective.

>> Michael Grant:
Support an enhanced guest worker program?

>> Trent Franks:
I support the right type of guest worker program. I'm concerned if the guest worker program doesn't -- isn't structured properly that it may still make it susceptible to terrorists entry or --

>> Michael Grant:
What about Senator Kerry's proposal for around amnesty?

>> Randy Camacho:
I am against amnesty because that will make the situation worse. We're going to have more deaths in our deserts as a result of that. But when we're talking about the clear act, law enforcement agencies do not agree with this because it puts an undue burden on them and it causes them to have to go away from their true responsibilities. So that's one issue. So that's a lack of understanding as far as I'm concerned when it comes to that issue. And when -- the other issue that he brought up, we were talking about the clear act, and then --

>> Michael Grant:
Talking about amnesty --

>> Randy Camacho:
The guest worker program. Conceptually I do favor guest worker program, but it does have to be set up in a way where it's done in a proper fashion, it's done in a way where there isn't any abuse of the system.

>> Michael Grant:
I want to get to one last subject. You changed your vote at the last minute on the Medicare prescription drug plan. Why?

>> Trent Franks:
It's a long story but let me try to capsulize it quickly. Those of us that were conservatives in the Congress were trying to create more reform in the Medicare system and use the Medicare prescription drug bill as a vehicle to accomplish that because it's so hard to do it in a standalone situation. There were two Medicare bills, there were a Senate version and a house version. The Senate version has been so tinkered by Senator Kennedy it was a disaster for this country. When the house version came up, they held a vote open for three hours, I was a no vote. Then when the decision was made by, unfortunately, by our side, to say, okay, this bill is going to lose, so we're going to bring the Senate version over and vote on it, then the house version that all the Democrats essentially, most of them, have voted no on, were willing to vote for the Senate version. They on only needed 25 Republicans and they would have perpetrated an absolute disaster on this country if they had done.

>> Michael Grant:
So it was the lesser of two evils?

>> Trent Franks:
It was trying to get the best we could under that circumstance, but the House Bill was 100% -- a thousand percent better than the Senate version, and I would do exactly the same thing again. There is one common fallacy out that there the president called me and asked me to change my vote. That's not true. When a few of us as conservatives decided to make sure we could stop the Senate version and decided to pass the house version, we called him and the conservatives chose me to be the one to speak to the president.

>> Michael Grant:
What about the medical prescription drug bill?

>> Randy Camacho:
Terrible piece of legislation. Doesn't do anything to offset the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs. It's the first step of the privatization of the immediate care program. Trent likes private station a lot. And the third reason is that there's no doubt who the priority was in this bill. It wasn't the American people. It was big business. That's why Trent Franks would vote all over for it again. Or vote for it again.

>> Michael Grant:
Do you disagree with the fundamental concept of we need a prescription drug benefit?

>> Randy Camacho:
Not at all. Not at all. In fact, I believe we do need to have a reimportation drug program where we can reemport drugs from Canada, as an example, as long as it's safe, and I do believe, also, that we need to make sure that we create incentives for preventative medicine so that healthcare isn't costing us more along the way. Our healthcare system is more reactionary than it is proaction. So we need to have a proceed proactive type of Medicare or should I say healthcare system.

>> Michael Grant:
Randy Camacho, we appreciate you very much joining us. Best of luck on the campaign trail. Congressman Trent Franks, our thanks to you as well.

>> Michael Grant:
There are two other candidates running in congressional district 2, Libertarian Powell Gammill and write-in candidate William Crum. Crum ran a couple years ago receiving 7 votes. The Libertarian last time around got almost 6,000 votes for about 5% of the total votes cast. If you would like more information about the election or want to see tonight's poll results, please visit the Channel 8 website as www.azpbs.org. On the main page you'll also find a link to "Horizon's ballot proposition website. If you click on "vote 2004," your web browser will take you to our Arizona ballot propositions website. You can learn about every proposition on the ballot. That site includes the text of the propositions, arguments for and against as well as transcripts from "Horizon's coverage of each of the ballot measures. Tomorrow night we'll be taking a look at some of the more contested legislative races. Thanks very much for joining us on this Tuesday evening. I'm Michael Grant. Hope you have a great one. Good night.

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